I've been a theatre nerd my whole life and it was really important to me when I moved to New York to continue to be a part of the theatre community. NYSX has given me (and so many others) the opportunity to connect with Shakespeare on so many different levels (that go beyond high school lit class!).
NYSX events:
With ShakesBEER, NYSX makes Shakespeare and the performing arts more accessible through its focus on community. It's a pub crawl, with Shakespeare! The show is interactive, it's a great introduction to pivotal and oft-quoted scenes, and did I mention the drink tickets?
The Sonnet Project thematically ties Shakespeare's sonnets to historical and communal landmarks and timeless geographical locations. The goal is to create a short film of every sonnet, and NYSX hosts salons to screen the films regularly throughout the year. These films bridge the gap between poetry and modern life.
With Freestyle Labs, NYSX facilitates hybrid performance-lecture-town hall discussions about issues facing performance in a complex sociopolitical landscape. The next one is called "What Do R&J Really Look Like?", will start with a mock audition for Romeo and Juliet to provoke conversation on how deeply ingrained unconscious biases affect our decisions.
NYSX puts on all those programs, plus the Mainstage Plays that are hailed as innovative, fresh, contemporary and accessible. In addition to this year's crowdpleasing A Midsummer Night's Dream, NYSX will put on Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna, which concerns a town, a tyrant, and the citizens who rise up together to defeat him.
As NYSX enters its tenth year, we need your support to help us continue creating conversations and bridging divides with innovative programming and meaningful dialogue. Any amount from $5 will help. Will you contribute?
More on NYSX:
What began nine years ago as a two-man operation to infuse a creative outlet into a corporate world and bring Shakespeare to a non-typical Shakespeare audience is now an internationally recognized company that has staged nine full-scale productions, produced 135 short films, and engaged diverse audiences all over with our acclaimed ShakesBEER performative pub crawls, Freestyle Labs and conversation series, and traveling Intersections residencies. From our earliest days in downtown Manhattan to now, NYSX has built community by focusing on the interplay--the exchange--between artist and audience.